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| I was so tired the first day without coffee - I couldn't even smile! |
I went without coffee for a week –
which as a seasoned law student seemed like something of a nightmare. An
impossible hellish journey brought on only by the desperate attempt to follow
the multiple instagram fitness girls who claim that coffee is their ‘pre-work
out’.
Completely unbelieving of the idea
that a mere coffee could be sufficient boost to my energy to encourage me to
drag myself into the gym I hesitantly – very hesitantly – began to cut down on
my coffee consumption.
I’m a little ashamed to admit the
process of cutting down my caffeine intake actually took 2-3 months – which is
probably why I didn’t boast about it on Instagram. The process of cutting back
on my caffeine intake was actually harder than I thought – resulting not only
in sleep deprivation but a lot of headaches and higher sugar intake.
Slowly through I cut down from
eight coffees a day to one to two a day. Once I was only consuming one coffee a
day I cut it cold turkey for seven days.
-
I strongly advise against cutting it completely
if you’re already drinking eight coffees, do it slowly like I did. Trust me it’s already a significant
challenge.
The first day of cutting coffee I
didn’t really mind it I just exchanged it for tea. I was aware that tea had caffeine,
but I wasn’t really looking to cut caffeine completely. I wasn’t anymore
energised than normal – nothing magical really happened to me. I went to the
gym as normal – not taking any coffee before hand. I just had a high carb snack
which is good for the body as it can convert simple carbohydrates quickly into
energy.
The second day was similar but I
only had one cup of tea – I didn’t feel like I needed any extra energy. I’d
reached a pretty good medium. Although it is worth saying that by this stage it
was past exam time and I was on holidays so there was no real demand on my
sleep. I chose instead to try out some herbal teas and started to focus more on
taking in straight drinking water. I started to set a goal of 1200 ml a day, or
two drink bottles worth (I have a 600 ml bottle). Personally I never saw much value in
increasing your water intake – despite its recent popularity in the health
circles. However, this opinion would change over the next six days.
The third day I was over coffee –
it still wasn’t appealing. I chose instead to drink hot water. It was around
day three that I started to notice that I was actually feeling energy from
things like fruit, cereal bars and chocolate. Previously I had never noticed
anything like that when consuming these foods. I think that it was possibly
because I was so used to such high doses of caffeine throughout the day that I
didn’t really notice these lower doses of sugar energy. They just didn’t rank
at all.
Fourth and fifth were pretty much
the same. Nothing really happened but I did definitely start looking at coffee
alternative. The ones that interested me the most were dandelion coffee - mostly because it was gluten and dairy free
allowing me to enjoy it without having to worry about too many additives. It’s
surprisingly low in calories and just as easy to make as an instant cup of
coffee.
The sixth day I started to take up
more intense training – as I’ve spoken about in another blog. I found at this
time that I was more keen to retry it. Thinking that maybe now I could feel the
energy from the sugar in fruit I thought there may actually be something in the
idea of coffee as a prework out. I stayed off coffee until day seven keen to
get the full effects of the caffeine re-introduction.
At the end of the week I was ready
to try coffee as my preworkout. For those who aren’t entirely sure what I mean
– I’m not talking about a protein shaking, high fat low-carb magic shake – it’s
generally some kind of food or drink used to peak your energy to give you that
final push in the gym. As an energy type food coffee makes for an easy to make
quick workout.
After one week of no coffee I was
finally rewarded with a preworkout coffee. 6:30 am on a Monday morning I
chugged one large mug of coffee in my gym gear. It was a quickly, barely
enjoyed drink – as I was exhausted and desperate to start the next start of my
day – as once gym is over I can crawl back into bed and sleep until my first
class starts.
I didn’t feel any kind of magical
kickstart to my usual gym routine. But I didn’t have any kind of carb snack or
other energy bar before my workout. Surprisingly, I was actually okay without
any of the stuff that I usually eat beforehand. The workout went as normal and
I continued on afterwards, I didn’t even have to crawl into bed too quickly
afterwards. It was a little exciting to me to be able to wait a little bit
before diving back into bed. I noticed too my resting heart rate raised from
it’s usualy 62 bpm at rest to 66 bpm at rest. An increase of 4 bpm – which is
significant considering the only change was a return to caffeine (I did
continue to have coffee periodically throughout the day – but I don’t think
I’ll be increasing it back up to seven coffees a day!)
I didn’t learn anything amazing
from this experiment – except I did begin to see that the impact of foods like
sugar, simple carbs and caffeine had on my body. Previously I’d discounted
these effects not realizing I was almost on a constant energy high. For anyone
who maybe doesn’t ever seem to feel the impacts or benefits of these energy
increasing foods it could be nice to try this experiment to understand how food
can influence your mood and energy.
If you’d like to join me on my
lifestyle journey then you can connect with me on Instagram, tumblr, twitter or
facebook!
Instagram: the_underage_lawyer
Tumblr:
theunderagelawyer.tumblr.com
Twitter: @underagelawyer
Facebook: @theunderagelawyer
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